Technology job market status: Better but not great

More than two years into a tech-sector downturn, people in touch with Indiana’s tech job market say they’re seeing signs of better days ahead.

But, they add, no one should expect a return to the red-hot job market that preceded the current slump.

“I think we’re going to be at a more realistic level of growth than we were in 2021,” said Katie Birge, the Indianapolis-based vice president of platform at Chicago-based investment firm M25. “I think 2021 felt unsustainable from the get-go in terms of companies’ hiring needs and the sheer number of open jobs they had.”

M25, which invests in Midwest-based tech startups, has about 100 active portfolio companies, including Indianapolis-based software firms Authenticx Inc. and Elate Inc., among a handful of others in this market.

M25 offers various types of hiring assistance to its portfolio companies: an online job board, a biweekly newsletter highlighting job openings and initial screening of job applicants.

From those activities, Birge said, she sees anecdotal evidence of an improving job market.

When the job market peaked in 2021, Birge said, M25’s job board had about 1,300 listings. That number bottomed out to less than 200 late last year and has improved over the past few months. “Now, we’re hovering slightly above 300,” Birge said.

The online job board includes job openings from all of M25’s portfolio companies. It also includes jobs at a few other tech companies that have a strong Midwestern presence but are not affiliated with M25, such as Chicago-based ActiveCampaign and Pittsburgh-based Duolingo Inc.

M25’s jobs newsletter, which goes out to recipients every other week, includes listings for newly posted jobs on M25’s job board. Over the past year, Birge said, the newsletter has seen its subscriber base grow 75%, while the number of people who have unsubscribed is up 400%.

Birge takes these metrics as a positive sign that the job market is improving. “We make this newsletter with the intent that when you find a job, you should just unsubscribe,” she said.

Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks layoffs from tech companies worldwide, provides another sign that the tech job market might be on the upswing.

The website, which launched in 2020, does not claim to be exhaustive, but it is a widely cited barometer of tech-sector employment. The site tracks both the number of layoffs and the number of companies shedding jobs, based on information from sources such as news reports and company announcements.

According to that website, 35 companies announced layoffs totaling 3,941 jobs in September. That’s the fewest job cuts since February 2022, when 3,685 layoffs were announced. Layoffs peaked in January 2023, with 277 companies announcing plans to cut a combined 89,709 jobs.

Ting Gootee, CEO of Indianapolis-based TechPoint, offered a wider perspective on those statistics. TechPoint is an initiative that works to strengthen the state’s tech sector.

The slowdown in layoffs, she said, should be taken in context of the overall volume of layoffs over the past two years. Layoffs.fyi’s tally of tech-sector job losses is above 570,000: 165,269 in 2022, 264,220 last year and 141,467 in 2024, as of earlier this week.

“That’s really reflective of a workforce restructuring in a major way,” Gootee said of the numbers.

The slowdown in the venture funding that many early-stage tech startups rely on is a major driver of that restructuring, Gootee said. Companies that have been able to secure venture funding have fared better, while others have had to refocus and reduce their staff—or perhaps go out of business altogether.

Dawn Lively-Jenkins is the founder and CEO of Indianapolis-based Fullstack PEO, which offers outsourced human resources services to both startups and more established companies. “A lot of our clients are tech firms with Indianapolis roots,” she said.

Lively-Jenkins said many of her clients have been forced in recent years to narrow their business focus, shift their business models or cut staff to survive in a tight funding environment. “They had to do a lot of pivots,” she said. “In doing so, there’s been a lot of restructuring.”

That pivoting and restructuring, along with the evolving artificial intelligence tools that improve worker productivity, should set those companies up for success once conditions begin to improve, Lively-Jenkins said.

Anecdotally, Gootee said, over the past six months she has seen an increase in the number of jobs that TechPoint’s member organizations are posting on TechPoint’s online job board. Those jobs are generally coming from startups that have secured venture funding, she said, as well as from companies in health tech and those that offer tech services—things like technology consulting and software implementation services.

Matt Hunckler, founder and CEO of Indianapolis-based Powderkeg LLC, said layoffs are still happening but on a smaller scale than during the early part of the downturn. Powderkeg is a business that connects tech founders, investors and job seekers in markets throughout the country, with a focus on startups.

“Companies have really gotten back to fundamentals, and they’re growing again,” Hunckler said. “And while it may not be tripling every year in terms of revenue size, it’s authentic growth, as opposed to a little bit more artificial growth at all costs.”

Still, the local job market remains tight, said Leila Spann, an Indianapolis resident who recently went through a layoff.

Spann was the marketing director at Indianapolis-based software firm Qualifi Technologies Inc. until a few months ago, when she and four colleagues were laid off. To aid in their search, the five created a marketing campaign called Hire a Koala, which featured a website that highlights each of the five and the skills they could bring to a new employer. (The campaign’s name references the fact that Qualifi’s corporate mascot is a koala.)

Spann said one member of the group, a software engineer, quickly found a new job. Others either pivoted to find a job at a non-tech employer or are still looking.

Spann decided to go full time with Enbloom Marketing, which she launched as a side project in June 2023 while still at Qualifi.

“It’s really tough for the ones that are looking, because there’s a lot of competition based on all of the layoffs, and there’s a minimal amount of roles,” Spann said. “Every little thing matters, with the interview and the resume and the cover letter and the thank you notes and everything much more weighted than it normally would [be].”

Spann said that, among her networking circle and the groups she’s involved with, she’s seen more people go out on their own as freelancers or contractors because the market is so tight.

But now that Spann is one of those contractors, the tight job market also has its upside: She’s picking up work from clients who might previously have had an in-house marketing staff. “A lot of me growing my business is because people don’t want to rely on full-time employees.”•